1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the safe navigation and browsing by a user of their financial institution websites, and more particularly to equipping multiple types of user device platforms with secure-view browsers which operate only with member sites in a trusted network.
2. Description of Related Art
Who to trust or work with on the Internet is no longer obvious to the average consumer. Many websites pose as wolves in sheep's clothing, looking benign or familiar but in reality waiting to spring on the unsuspecting. Consumers need tools and friends they can trust to help protect them from loses and other catastrophes.
CONSTANT GUARD™ by XFINITY is an online protection suite that securely stores passwords for easy access to users' favorite websites. Strong passwords offer the most protection when accessing and using financial websites, but remembering and safeguarding them increases in difficulty with their complexity and single-purpose uses. The Service includes security notices when risks have been detected for particular users.
Vance Bjorn, et al., observed in United States Patent Application Publication US 2010-013203, published May 27, 2010, that as users become more active on computers, their concerns about identity protection increase. Users are concerned about the security of their digital identity. There are numerous tools to protect various aspects of identity. However, in the prior art, each of these aspects of a user's digital identity must be individually handled. The user can download anti-virus software, encryption software, and other tools to attempt to protect their system and identity. One of the biggest concerns for users is passwords used to access accounts ranging from 401K accounts, to bank accounts, and email. Stories about users' passwords being stolen or compromised are abundant. Users want privacy of their account, but they also want convenience. With the huge numbers of accounts that most users have these days, there is often a problem with choosing passwords for each of them, and ensuring that those passwords are of sufficient complexity and changed regularly. This causes many millions of dollars of loss, to consumers as well as banks and other institutions.
But Bjorn offered no sign-on automation, no enhanced security protection for passwords used in the browser, no URL white lists, etc. Bjorn manages passwords, their strength, like in a vault authenticated by biometrics hardware and a server. A better solution would be all software, however Bjorn relies on biometric hardware and on-premise server components.
Bjorn is also not multi-tenant. Multi-tenancy involves a single instance of software run on a server that serves multiple client-organizations, or tenants. Multi-tenant architectures virtually partition data and configurations, each client organization works with a customized virtual app instance.
Bjorn depends on biometrics and does not authenticate using a PIN service. Bjorn requires clients to use buy and deploy biometrics hardware to talk to their backend. The identity protection suite (IPS) system from Bjorn is about managing users, identities, password strength, and their permissions. Instead of using each as they come from the financial institutions in support of online accounts. Bjorn do not interact with the websites, which seems to be a miscalculation. Bjorn provides access to passwords, e.g., for users to copy and then sign on manually into their site. As a result, they do not offer the enhanced security that is possible.
Bjorn does not appear to be targeting consumers, they seem more about the enterprise. You can't get data protection as a consumer, a given enterprise buys the client/server solution and only then can it be deployed to their users. Bjorn describes on-premise solutions for the enterprise to integrate and then offer the results to their users.
No one computer security application can do it all and free competition has resulted in hundreds, if not thousands of offerings that promise many perspectives on similar problems. Advertising has been the traditional solution to finding customer for products and for customers to understand what's available.
New technologies can be “pushed” to market and market demand can “pull” sales. In a marketing “pull” system the consumer requests the product and “pulls” it through the delivery channel.
Push marketing can be interactive, especially when the Internet is used as the communications channel. Amazon and other retailers learned long ago that sales can be enhanced if they suggest or push related products to those in a buyer's “shopping cart”. Buyers are given the opportunity to click on the suggested products, often saying other buyers had bought these as well. Protection suites are collections of best-in-class computer security products that make good sense when used in combination together. For example, NORTON™ SECURITY SUITE, IDENTITY GUARD®, SECURE BACKUP & SHARE, XFINITY™ TOOLBAR, etc.